Coffee and creativity
CMU art and business student aims to start own business after feature at Kaya
Hanging on the walls of Kaya Coffee House, Tommy Gray's oil paintings showed his creativity as a painter and illustrator.
Not only has Gray been painting since he was a child, but he has been working at Kaya since February.
“Ever since I was really little I’ve enjoyed making art,” Gray said. “I picked up a crayon one day and just kept going. I had a really inspiring art teacher in high school and wanted to learn more."
Hoping to pair his artistic abilities with real-world business savvy, Gray decided to major in entrepreneurship. One day he hopes to own his own coffee shop or art gallery.
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"Entrepreneurship will teach me central business skills that I need to know if I want to be a business owner," he said. "I feel like the artistic part of me and the business part are kind of separated right now, and I hope they will intertwine in the future."
Gray has practiced using different types of mediums such as pencil, oil paint and charcoal. He started out drawing cartoon characters and found that painting was more his calling.
“Art is my biggest passion, and I really feel like I can express myself that way, in an artistic way whereas other people would express themselves through music or things like that," Gray said. "Art allows me to kind of create my own world, and I can put whatever I want in it. It keeps me sane. When I paint, I can just tune out the world and really get into it. All the issues in life are put away for however long. It makes me feel happy too. I feel really accomplished when I paint. Art is kind of the window to my soul."
Gray finds inspiration through many things, but one of the biggest inspirations is music.
“I get a lot of my ideas from music. Music gets me in touch with my feelings, and my feelings is where I get inspiration,” Gray said.
Despite his external inspirations, Gray said success in fine arts is created through rigorous practice and repetition.
“For someone interested in art and being featured, I would say to practice,” Gray said. “Practice is your best bet to achieving a level you want. Actually sitting down and focusing on something will help ideas flow, and you’ll come up with something great in no time.”
Kaya displays a different artist every two weeks. All a student has to do is come in and give their information to a worker. If Kaya is interested and has a slot, they will call the artist and display their artwork.
Gray's talents came as a surprise to co-worker and friend, Adam Kovsky.
“I came into work one day, and I was looking up on the art board. I saw some really cool art," said the Livonia senior. "I was like ‘wow that’s pretty good, we got some good local talent around here.’ A couple days go by, and I forget who it was, but someone’s like, ‘yeah, that’s Tommy’s art up there’, and I thought ‘Tommy did that? No way!’” Kovsky said.
Kovsky was taken aback by the talent that Gray had displayed at Kaya. It was a new side to Gray.
"Tommy's a really genuine guy, says what he means, means what he says," Kovsky said.
